


Rapture

by panickinskywalker



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-20 07:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11331420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panickinskywalker/pseuds/panickinskywalker
Summary: Somehow space never managed to stop being beautiful. Something about the swirling, inky void and the distant, twinkling lights still whispered to him promises of some kind of unattainable freedom. It's something sublime, and the stars around here still glitter like they've forgotten what's happened. There was that mourning again, when she spun in her chair to face it. Still, now, as it hung in the sky the Earth shone a deceptive, vibrant blue.  A color that promised something other than the death that had become of it.





	1. Chapter 1

You don't remember how you got here.

You don't have time to think about it. Right now all you know is that your legs ache, and your lungs burn, and you can't quite run fast enough but you're dead if you stop. There's a din around you. A cacophony of voices and booming impacts and debris whistling through the air, but there's a pounding in your head that all but drowns it out. 

The air around you shimmers for just a second and you barely notice, there's another terrible sound coming from the red thing looming in front of you like an angry conduit of thunder, a streak of burning light crashes at your feet. You footing disappears, and you're done for. Your skull cracks harshly against the ground, your head swims and you can't see, but you can hear that thing approaching you. Its metal feet thump and its mechanics hiss violently.

Arms up. Struggle for focus. Get up. Fight back, or you're dead.

The thing takes you in it's nigh on crushing grip, you wait for a finality that doesn't come.  
Stasis was easier.

 

The lights here are too harsh, spotlights glaring off something that used to be clinical, white, throwing everything into uncomfortable clarity. They flicker on at a designated time, recalibrated from whatever alien thing they had been to rotate through a twenty-four hour cycle. It seemed like a good idea at the time, these days the lights manage to surprise him every time. They blind him out of a sleep he'd just managed to fall into, and throwing an arm over his face does nothing to soothe it. There's a moment of silence, then the voice comes.

"Good morning, Dave." There's an artificial fondness to the voice which he's come to read as sarcasm, rather than synthesized humanity.

There's a singular groan from the only body in a row of cots, and he rolls himself over and shoves his face into the sheet thin pillow. "What morning?"

"Do you want me to approximate how many days these systems have been operational? How many since we left Earth? I am capable."

"Time isn't real, jackass." 

There's no reply, and the silence is what finally drives him to get up. 

Here his footsteps echo in a way Dave's never been able to grow used to. By now the cargo ship is barren, and each step comes back to him like a smack to the gut, louder than it left him. A harbinger of the solitude. Strange, when nothing else but the sound seems to remind him so much of it. The door to the galley hisses open, slower than it used to, and of their own accord his hands set about putting together something that might've passed for prison food, when prisons were still a thing. 

"So," the voice comes again, distant and distinctly digital. "What's on the agenda today?"  
Dave pauses to consider it, halfway through a mouthful of whatever it is that powder makes when he mixes it with water. The writing on the package is written in an alien alphabet he's yet to crack. 

"You're the expert."

"You know, the mechanisms are getting kind of tired up in here. I could nudge one of them, get a nice, life-threatening beat going. What do you say?" 

"Nah. I think I'll stick to safe." He's heading for the door again, bowl in hand, and he has to give the automatic door a kick to get it to stop struggling and open. Even in the light, the ship is eerie. Not just the quiet, it's got the distinct feel of something that was meant to be full of people. It's like walking into an empty school. 

Though, he knows he's not passing by disused classrooms. There's serial numbers on the door and bars on the windows, and not for the first time he wonders why they were kept asleep, and how far they were going before he managed to point the ship in another direction. The door to the bridge still slides open as smoothly as it ever had, and somehow the sight from here manages to make his chest stutter and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. 

Somehow space never managed to stop being beautiful. Something about the swirling, inky void and the distant, twinkling lights still whispered to him promises of some kind of unattainable freedom. It's something sublime, kept from him by hyperspace grade star-safe glass and ancient, rusted shut hydraulics. And somehow again, there's something about the stars here that's familiar.  
Dave walks carefully over to the console, sets his bowl safely away from the controls and watches, like he's waiting for the sky to change.

"Hal?" For the first time in months he's looking at the navigations computer, scrolling through rows of information and searching for something in the alien text he might understand. 

There's something like a "Hm?" from the speaker, as if the systems have anything better to do than follow him around the ship like a lost puppy.

"Where are we?"

The response is a mechanical hum, like the ship is thinking. "It seems we're somewhere near the milky way. I can be more specific, if you'd like. Tell you it'd probably take us a day cycle to get to Earth, or where Earth used to be, if you wanna check out just how royally jacked up that sad old space rock is. We'll have to change course a few degrees."

"No." It's immediate, almost quavering, and a moment later he adds. "Got better things to do." He takes the bowl from the console, and the lights in the bridge dim a moment after the door shuts behind him.

 

The stars around here still glitter like they've forgotten what's happened. Like the planet Roxy knew was hiding among them somewhere was still green, still living. She made it a point to have autopilot take her in when she needed to visit, but a noise from the computer made her shut it off, left her coasting to a stop too far from the pull of its atmosphere. An incessant, docile chiming from the radar which was telling her something far more urgent. 

Another craft, hovering so close to the planet it must've drifted there by mistake. She could see it there, when she finally dared to look out. 

Roxy lost count of the times she circled it, enough so that the sun had hidden behind her ex-planet and she'd relied on the shuttle's temperamental lights to take in the relic. Space junk, she thought, old enough it was a miracle this thing was still spaceworthy. Somehow, it still managed to be red in places. As red as the flags that flew over stolen cities and the metal monsters which had taken them. The hull at the rear still clung to the fork that had been branded on it- dented and torn at, but still incredible white. The sight of it almost made her turn tail and run, but if there were supplies inside the responsibility fell to her to claim them.

It's not as precise as she'd like it to be. Her shuttle is reclaimed from stolen parts and cobbled together, and she suspected once it would've looked a lot like the ship she was gearing up to raid, but somehow neither of them seem all that compatible. Though, one frustrating moment later, she's latched on. The whole cargo ship groans and shudders like it’s trying to shake her off.

Roxy holds her breath while the airlock opens, and she hesitates in the hatch before she climbs through, and the belly of the cargo ship is starkly clean. She doesn't need to look to know that it's empty, She just hauls herself through the hatch fully, and heads for a brittle looking staircase while the airlock shuts behind her again.

She has to step carefully here. Once the hatch shuts the ship is thrown into pitch darkness that the light strapped to her rifle struggles to relieve. It's hollow. The inside of it sounds lonely, the noise of her boots on disused metal floor resonates in a way that makes her feel homesick. The hall she comes into is barren, but the one through the door on the far side is lined with numbered doors, and the sight of them has Roxy's heart stuttering like she wishes she wasn't familiar with. She'll take her hand from her gun only to press the button on a small communication device clipped to her lapel, and wait for it to chime back at her.

"Found another prison transport. Doesn't look like this one was ever repurposed," Roxy is light footed like a ghost, her footfalls all but silent as she makes her way through the hall and out the other side, takes note of the kitchen in the galley she'd found herself in, and continues on into another lonely hall across the room. "Can't find any identifiers, though. This one looks like it's probably from the start of the war. Everythings written in stupid Alternian." 

Roxy walks past the door that tells her it leads to the bridge, and the one that says it leads to crews quarters, and finds herself at the top of another staircase. The underbelly of the ship is darker, and she's got to brace herself before she goes down, like she's going under water.  
She's seen ships like this before. She's raided them before, and somehow they manage to be different every time. It might be that this is only the second or third she's explored that's still in it's original empire sanctioned state. Whatever it is, it keeps things interesting. 

Down here the ship seems to strain under the weight of each step she takes, until she lands on the bottom floor and her footing almost vanishes from underneath her, and the grip on her gun fails. She catches herself on the railing, snatches her rifle as it clatters down the steps and nearly surrenders to the viscous goo she finds to be coating the floor. She rights herself quickly, points her light into the cavernous space. 

As far as the eye can see, and farther than her light can reach, the underbelly of the ship is lined with rows of what she recognizes to be stasis chambers. The kind meant for cargo that might not survive, that clunk and rattle, and sometimes don't breathe right. Now silent, and still, and long dead. The antiquity almost knocks the air out of her.

A meticulous sweep of the room from her vantage at the bottom of the stairs illuminates a sight somehow far less welcome. A cluster of torn open cocoons cling to the wall, there's something poking from a rupture in the bottom of one of them which looks suspiciously like a hand reaching for a gun, and it's enough for her to decide that responsibility can go fuck itself. 

The sense of obligatory, nostalgic mourning leaves her as quickly as she's back up the stairs and kicking the nasty stuff from the bottom of her boots, and she’d decided just as quickly that there was absolutely nothing in this ship worth checking out. 

Maybe just the bridge. Maybe she shouldn’t act so rashly. The sign catches her eye again as she passes it and she slows to a stop in front of the door, thinks she must be losing her mind. A moment later she realized she is, in fact, succumbing to a particular brand of space crazy because she’s certain she can hear a voice on the other side. Two voices. Two voices coming from the control room of a dead, dark cargo ship drifting just out of the grip of Earth’s orbit.

 

Roxy's gun is aimed almost as quickly as the door slides open, even as the lights from the bridge blind her.

"Oh, yeah." Hal's voice comes from the console, not that Dave seems to think it's more important than the rifle that's being pointed his way. His hands are up before Hal takes the time to go on. "Someone's in the ship." 

"Stop the fuckin' presses. No, for real, you'd think this kinda thing would be making ship-wide headlines, maybe shock the citizens out of their catharsis. Give some of the oldies the moxy to get up and start protesting imminent gentrification." There's emotion in his voice that almost sounds foreign. Like even he's not sure why it's there, but it's there, and the heel of Dave's shoe is thudding against the console. Fuck that particular panel of sheet metal. "But, hey, what else should I expect from an AI who volunteered himself to be called Hal. Sure, I've never sat down with Stan and discussed the finer points of his odyssey but I'm at least mostly certain the Hal guy was evil. I'm changing your name, dude. You don't get to pick anymore. From now on you get to be called Bay- you just did to me what he did to fine cinema.”

"To be fair, I've hardly got the context here. My cerebrals may be spinning somewhere in the vicinity of fuck-you-RPM, but I don't exactly have a database of malicious intelligences in here, bro." 

Somewhere along the way Roxy's lowered her rifle and blinked the light out of her eyes, the scene playing out in front of her is so surreal it's almost making her head spin.

"Okay, okay! Howsabout we pulls the breaks here a hot sec. Let's chug this archaic choo choo to a full halt cause ya gal's got questions." Slowly, she straps the rifle to her back, takes a second to pray to some deity that he's not going to rush her, and as she holds her hands up to show Dave her palms, he lets his lower. 

"Shoot. It's probably safe to say that now the gun's out of your hands. You're not gonna quickdraw on me. You're not from some far off planet where everything's the wild wild west, right? Have you seen Will Smith's dick, is what I'm asking."

"Alright, buddy. I'm gonna need you to shut it. Firstlies- no, shit. Gotta keep this profesh. First of all, bucko, I'm asking the questions around here. Second, what kinda question is that? I'm not claiming to be some ancient earth cinema history buff, but yeah. Who hasn't gone through that scene frame by frame? Dude's fine as hell. Wait- fuck. I'm here for a reason. Quit distracting me with dong questions."

"Come on, the movie's not that old."

"Okay, that wasn't a question so I'll let it slide, but do you, like, know how to not talk?"

"No."

"How'd you get the ship?"

She watches as something in his expression changes minutely, and the familiarity of it makes her shiver. He looks down, a hand reaches up to touch his face, and for a moment he seems confused.

“I’m Dave, by the way. Thanks for asking. This is Hal.”

“Hi.” The voice from the console chimes in again.

“Dave.” She repeats, almost incredulous. 

“Dave Strider. Are names still a thing, or do we all just go by serial numbers now?”

“Roxy,” she concedes, after a moment. “Roxy Lalonde.”

“Oh.” He looks up at her again, and this time he’s sure she can see that confusion written on his expression. She’s looking at him the same way, like she can’t figure out why she knows him.

“You too?” Roxy takes another step forward, her tone makes it sound like an apology. She slips into one of the chairs scattered around the room, and nods quietly to the one opposite. “Where’d you find the ship, Dave?”

He gives his head a minute shake and sits with her, but for a tense moment he’s silent. “One of those BFG things snatched me up when I was a kid.”

“The what now?”

“Big fucking iron giant assholes with the hot rod paint jobs. Stuffed me into one of those pods downstairs. I was supposed to be cannon fodder I think. I guess the nap pod shorted out. I woke up and took out a bunch of those grey assholes Van Damme styles-”

“Wait, wait.” Roxy holds a hand up. “The drones, right? Betty hasn’t been in the business of people snatching since-”

“So I took out all the G.I. jerks, then I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself other than not die, and I guessed that was pretty much out of my hands anyway so,” He inclines his head to the side, just slightly, in the direction of the door. “How long was I out, doc?” 

“No. No, no, no, no, ‘cause those pods are garbage. Like, bonafide garbage dude. There’s no way one of those had you frozen up since the start of the war.” 

“Which was?”

“Oh, not long. Just four fucking entire centuries. Give or take.” 

“Huh.” He can’t seem to look at her. Dave’s gaze drifts away and locks on something behind her.

Roxy hadn’t caught it before. In the confusion of finding a wayward human and a disembodied voice, she’d been a little distracted. There was that mourning again, when she spun in her chair to face it. Still, now, as it hung in the sky the Earth shone a deceptive, vibrant blue. A color that promised something other than the death that had become of it. She makes a noise like the sight of it knocked the wind out of her, spins her chair back around barely a moment after she’d turned to face it, and presses the button on her lapel until it chimes again.

“Put me through to Strider,” she says, and Dave nearly leaps out of his seat.

“Strider-” he starts, but she puts up a finger to stop him, and he dumbly obeys. 

A moment later, there’s a crackling from the device on her shirt, and a distant voice comes through. “Roxy, what is it. I’m busy-”

“Okay, but DS you need to shut the fuck up because you’re gonna wanna hear this.”

“Put me in my place quicker next time. Let me get my wrist out of this asshole, don’t want to mess up anything delicate in here.”

“By asshole you mean one of your lame robo-projects right- wait, no. Don’t answer, this is more important. Dude I found your brother.” 

There’s a long note of silence from the other end, and then softly, resigned; “Jesus christ, Rox. What kinda weird space rocks have you been hitting out there. I know no one else wants to drag their sorry, bruised asses all the way out to the scene of the kicking, but it’s not that bad.” 

“Dirk, shut up. I’m serious! It’s your bro. Or like, progenitor or whatever. Like Rose. But for you. You seen his name in the file right? Dave, say hi.” 

“Roxy-” 

“Shut up!” There’s a resigned sigh from it, and she’s unclipping the communicator from her shirt and holding it out towards Dave. He seems less than keen to speak into the thing at all. He keeps his eyes, almost unreadably distrusting, locked on Roxy as he leans in. 

“Yo. Uh, Dirk?” He speaks after a long silence, and Roxy can barely contain her glee. There’s a little, squeaky noise coming from her like the grin on her face is the result of being filled to bursting with the stuff. 

“Quit fucking with me, I’m busy.”

“She’s not fucking with you. Or at least, not about my name being Dave- Dave Strider. Hi.” 

More silence, there’s just the first notes of a word coming through before Roxy’s talking again.  
“We’d better blow this joint, D.” 

“Yeah. She’s still there, huh?” 

“Surprised she hasn’t hauled ass out here already- can practically see her glorious empire from here.” 

“Get moving, RoLal. Stay safe. I- I’ll see you soon.” 

“Hey.” It’s like he’s saying something completely different to her. Something that Dave can’t parse. Roxy clips the thing back to her shirt and stands, she wanders over towards the door, and her voice is almost too quiet to hear. “It’s gonna be fine- Remember all that cool stuff you read? We’ll be there in a few days. I gotta go.” 

He hears it chime at her again before she turns to face him, and there’s a tender expression on her face that almost makes him nervous. “We’ll be there in a few days?” 

“Oh- shit. Shit, shit. Damn it. So, uh- that was a lot to take in, huh?” She’s looking away from him sheepishly, but all he can manage is a nod before she goes on. “You wanna float around in space till you die, or get picked up by Betty’s goonies again, or you wanna come with me?”

Roxy walks past, towards the console, and the look on her face tells him she already knows his answer. 

“You know how to fly this thing?”

“You bet your ass, I do. I’ve been flyin’ these rust buckets since the rapture.” 

“Rapture- whatever. Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Hal, right?” Roxy’s hunched over the console, and she speaks before she’s even sure there’s a presence. Her hands sweep over the controls and their alien markers like Dave’s never seen anyone do anything. He can’t help but hover closeby, the apprehension on him palpable. It doesn’t take long for her to get a response. 

 

“That’s my name, say it as many times as you like.” 

 

“Does he flirt with you like this?” She’s turned to glance at Dave, brows raised and questioning.

 

“Only on special occasions,” is his almost unnoticably hesitant reply. 

 

“Only when I’m feeling frisky, or particularly amicable.” 

 

Roxy’s fingers are dancing expertly across the nav computer while she speaks. “So you can feel, huh? How you feel about those coordinates?”

 

“I feel like without some kind of warp drive, it’s going to take us a few days to get there.”

 

“But we  _ will _ get there.”

 

“You have my word, miss Lalonde.”

 

“We’ll see what that’s worth-” Almost as if to spite her, she can feel the ship begin to move and it knocks her back a step, “You be careful with my ship, mister supercomputer.”

 

“It’s worth a pain in the ass, mostly.” Dave pipes up from where he’d taken up the most intentionally casual stance Roxy had ever seen, leaned up against the console with his hands in his pockets while he watched her work. She’s moved onto some other screen Dave could never make a lick of sense from, scrolling through lines of glyphs he doesn’t even bother to look at.

 

There’s an “Ouch,” from the console speaker before Roxy interrupts.

 

“Okay, I don’t need to know about your personal lives.” 

 

“Double ouch.”

 

“Hal, shut it. I still got questions. Where’d you come from?”

 

There’s a stutter from the systems inside the ship. “Crockercorp Industries.”

There’s a look on Roxy’s face that’s almost incredulous, Dave can see it even when it’s pointed down at the screen she’s working on, and then she points it his way. “Check this out dude it’s gonna be mad cool. You’re gonna like this.” There’s one more quick key press before she goes on. “Aight, Hal, you wanna try that again? Who made you?”

 

There’s another stutter, a short, sustained note before some actual words come from it. “Bro Strider.”

 

She was planning something- Roxy had already been turning to face Dave again but she doesn’t quite make it before she’s barking out a laugh. Dave’s standing up like he’s been electrocuted, hands yanked from his pockets, and he’s leaning over the computer not a second later. 

 

“Are you shitting me, dude. He actually went made you call him bro? What kinda mid-life crisis bullshit were you even having to deal with back there.” Roxy seems to find this the height of hilarity, and Dave’s not sure what makes it funny. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to be reacting to this, but to stare blankly down at some scrolling lines of Alternian.

 

“Bro made you?” 

 

“No offense, dude, but I figured my inherent charm made that kind of obvious.” Dave’s not sure if he’s hearing things, but Hal’s voice sounds a little clearer, and Roxy’s slid away from the screen to give Dave full access. 

 

“I guess Betty thought artificial intelligence might come in handy, so she nabbed it right from Strider’s fingerless-gloved hands. Put some kinda patch on the poor dude when they installed him in here, though. You in any of the other ships?”

 

“Nah. They were pretty desperate to shove me in here in the first place. Last I heard, things were really going to hell down on Earth, and then I was too far away to check things out. Got to watch this dude kick some mighty Crockercorp ass, though, before he went all sleeping beauty.”

 

“I’ll fill you in later, bud.” Roxy hasn’t quite figured out where she’s supposed to look when she’s talking to him, so she’s settled for the speaker sitting in the console, for now.

 

“I picked up some stuff when we drifted by the rock, earlier. The signals pretty nasty, though. All kinds of degraded. What’s rapture? You mentioned it earlier.”

 

“You got a file on the rapture?” She’s not quite disbelieving, almost a little incredulous, like she’s sure he’s joking. It’s enough to distract her from the way Dave’s still hunched over the screen, scrolling through lines of text he can’t understand, verging on frantic.

 

“It’s recent-”

 

“I didn’t think the goonies were writing reports anymore.”

 

“2425”

 

“It’s nothin’ super news worthy, just that's what we call it. The mass exodus.” 

 

“Sounds biblical.” Dave’s finally turned away from the screen to join the conversation, back in that same posed position as before, and thankful they’d let him ride out the all out panic in relative private.

 

“It was-” Roxy seems less than enthused to get into details, the beginning of her sentence more of a sigh than actual words. “There were a lot of us, not so many left now. Space aint as cool as it looks on TV.” 

 

“I’d like details-” Hal’s pressing, and Roxy’s not having it.

 

“Just cool your freakin’ jets for a couple days, we got the full histories back home. You’ll get ‘em”

 

“Hal, can you navigate?” Dave’s standing up, meandering towards the door and nodding Roxy towards it. She’s a little bemused, but she pushed off the console to follow anyway.

 

“It seems you’re trying to keep me out of something. If you’d like some privacy, you could just ask.”

 

“Fuck off.” He nods Roxy, who’s hesitating, hovering by the console still, towards the door that’s slid open for him. 

 

“Later, Hal. Holler if you need somethin.”

 

“Oh, you bet I will.”

 

Roxy manages a wave into the empty room as she slips out of it, and Hal is immediately endeared.

 

 

 

“So. You know Rose? Or, I guess knew?” The conversation had finally dropped enough for Dave to work up the courage to ask the question that’d been sitting on the tip of his tongue for hours.

 

There’s enough of a thinking silence that Roxy can look around the crew's quarters like she hasn’t done that a dozen times already. It’s bare, and she wonders how Dave lived here on his own for so long without losing his damn mind. The crew’s quarters are empty and windowless but for the rows of cots and the footlockers that go along with them, and the walls are bare grey but they’ve got her attention.

 

After a moment Roxy shakes her head, rueful. Suddenly the cot she’s sitting on is far more interesting than the walls or his question, and especially more than the small talk they’d been going round in circles in for hours. “No. I mean, not personally. I know a lot  _ about _ her, so I guess that’s the closest I’ll ever get. Most of the progenitors are all gone. We all come from them, but maybe they could never remix the genetics just right. If there was another Rose out there she wouldn’t have all the memories. She wouldn’t be  _ my _ Rose, y’know? Some of us back home got siblings but man, you’re the real deal.”

 

“Damn right,” he says it with an air of smugness which she can’t tell is sarcastic or not, as if he has more than a vague clue what she’s talking about.

 

“It’s pretty tight when you consider it. Like, so tight dude. You remember a pre-Betty Earth. What was it like? Did you go to school? Did you get to see Rose a lot? Was she as cool as all the reports are telling me?” The way her voice echoes here still makes Roxy shudder, but she’s too excited to notice it now. She’s sitting on the edge of the cot, uncomfortably, looking like Dave’s about to have her hanging off every word. 

 

“You’ve read about Earth, I guess. Not sure how it can compare to living there-”

 

“Oh, we lived there. Left a long ass time ago, and it was kinda…”

 

“Apocalyptically depressing?”

 

“That’s a word for it. But whatever, man. Hearin’ about what kinda shithole the planet is now is way less cool than what it used to be like. How’d you live? What’d you do?” Roxy’s giving him an encouraging nod, he almost doesn’t notice that she holds down the button on her comm to record.

 

“I went to school, mostly. Movie’s nailed it… kind of. I’d get up at fuck-you in the AM, drag my ass to a building full of other pre-pubescent jackoffs who didn’t want to be there. Attended outdated classes that had jack all bearing on what it was gonna be like once we actually all got the fuck out.” 

 

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. It was an institution. I just thought maybe it was different! You know, in real life.” 

 

“Some of the people were okay. One or two of the teachers actually gave a shit. I dunno what it was like for Rose, but she was just as cynical about the whole thing.” The mention of Rose has Roxy leaning in further. “We didn’t really get to hang out a lot- in person at least. Mostly it was just the internet. She lived out in New York. Rainbow Falls. Out in the boonies-”

 

“Me too!” She barely gives him time to finish the word, there’s a painfully sincere kind of delight on her face that makes her look like she’s got no place being twenty years old. “I mean, it wasn’t the boonies by the time I got dropped off, but same place. I guess you lived in Houston, right? Before everything went to shit.” 

 

“And after. Wasn’t really a great deal of opportunity to haul my ass outta dodge once Betty’s shit hit the fan. Dirk, too?” 

 

“Mmhm. For a while. What’d you do for fun out there?”

 

“You mean Texas themed fun, specifically?

 

“No, dipshit. I mean you themed fun.”

 

“Sounds kinda personal.”

 

“Hey, I’m not here to judge your jackin’ habits. Just curious dude.” Roxy’s got her hands up in the air, in surrender. 

 

“I used to mix. Like, on turntables. Me and the apocalypse squad threw the dopest shindigs on the block.” There’s a short pause, Roxy can practically see a wall coming down. He almost can’t help it, there’s an uncanny familiarity about her that makes him want to tell her everything. “I wanted to be a paleontologist, I had this shelf all stacked up with dead shit in jars.” He glances at her, expecting to see some degree of disgust on her face. Roxy’s attentive instead, looks more like she’s filing things away in some mental storage than like she’s about to hurl him out the airlock for being morbid. “I used to play video games- my bro reviewed them, so I had this fuckin’ straight up smorgasbord of digital content to get my greedy little fingers on. Mostly I just played the shitty ones for some giggles, though. I used to rap.”

 

“Oh shit, rap? Were you good?”

 

There’s a kind of bashful half-laugh from him. “Nah.” 

 

“Y’know I think I kinda wanna try it before I buy it. Dirk’s pretty good. And he can attest to my hype-man skills, if you’re ever in the market.” 

 

“Toss me your resume some time, I’ll hit you up next time I feel like making an ass of myself.” 

 

The conversation lulls into quiet, and for the first time Dave notices how loudly their voices have been echoing off the walls. There’s a fervor about Roxy that’s way too contagious, and he’s so focused on the relief it is to have another living, breathing body around that he doesn’t notice the expression she’s got pointed his way. It’s not quite confused, not accusing, just a soft kind of curiosity about him. She doesn’t speak up until he prompts her with a;

“What?”

 

“You remind me of him. Dirk, I mean.” It’s fond, and he’s got to turn away from the way she’s looking at him. 

 

“You remind me of Rose.” He’s still looking away, but from the corner of his eyes he sees her expression grow saccharine. “I mean, you kinda look like her. Minus the whole servant of the dark forces aesthetic she had goin’ on. Looking like she just got done mixing up her most potent of hexes to date. She used to give me this look sometimes- that one, when I was pissing her off. Yours looks nicer, though.” 

 

Roxy stares at him a moment longer, that same weary and accusatory, and still somehow semi-amused expression on. There’s a twitch of a smile on Dave’s face which almost instantly has her forgiving him for ruining the moment. She flops back on the cot she’d claimed and regrets it right away, the uncomfortable mattress almost winds her, but she wriggles to get comfortable and folds her arms behind her head. 

“You were eighteen, right? When you got drone-napped. You ever hear what happened to her?”

 

Dave sits up a little straighter, looks over at her again. “What happened?”

 

“Well, she got super famous just for starters. She was so badass, dude. She wrote all these dope wizardy books that basically dominated the nation or some other lame buzzwords. Y’know, they say the pair of you started the whole rebellion, and then she was at the head of it all for years. Kickin’ ass and takin’ names but no way was she taking prisoners. They say she had this mad future-sense- like vision omnifold-” Roxy’s got a hand outstretched ceiling-ward. There’s a reverence about her voice, and it’s Dave’s turn to be hanging on her words. “She could see everything. All the BS the universe and Betty had in store for her and everyone else- even me, like four hundred years later. At least that’s what all the tabloids were all so hyped about way back in the day. Callin’ my mom a future-tellin’ witch.” 

 

“Your mom? Hold up, I thought everyone was, like, clones, or ecto-babies or whatever.”

 

“Yeah, okay, but hear me out.” Roxy’s almost bashful about it, resigned, she’s sitting up and fiddling with her fingers in her lap with just the hint of a smile. “It’s kinda hard to read about the lady responsible for your existing, who wrote all your fave books and did her best to ass-kick your least fave person, and bassically was the baddest ass in charge of tryin’ to take back Earth, and to not want that lady to be your mom, y’know? I know she’s not  _ really _ -”

 

“Hey.” He doesn’t give her the time to finish that sentiment. “Your mom sounds like she grew up to be pretty dope. Like one of those movies with girl protagonists, only way more goth and way more feminist. Probably way more hidden bunker where she sacrifices small animals to the dark gods-”

 

He stops with a grunt, the toe of Roxy’s boot collides with his shin maybe a little harder than she’d intended, but he’s brushing it off. “Okay, maybe I deserved that but, damn. You don’t fuck around.”

 

“She was pretty dope.” There’s sentiment caught in her throat, Roxy swallows it away before she goes on. “I had cats.” 

 

“Cats?” 

 

“In jars. Or, glass I guess.”

 

 

_ It’s warm. Even for a Texas in the middle of summer, caught in the grasp of global warming, and Dave is fucking sick of it.  _

 

_ He’s sick of a lot of things, these days. He’s sick of TV, and canned food, and everybody knowing his name. He’s sick of the way they look at him like he’s saved them all. It’s what he’s supposed to do, but he’s sick of it, when all he’s done is delay the inevitable. He’s just waiting to be crushed under the doldrums. He doesn’t want this to be the rest of his life.  _

 

_ People had raised flags around the carcasses of the red, metal giants that tried to take them this time, because this time someone had finally fought back. The standard procedure for a drone attack is to wait. Hide. Let them do their damage. There’s another thing Dave’s sick of.  _

 

_ He’d known that doing this was incredibly risky, but he’d also known that he is very, very good. He’d said a sardonic  _ Thanks _ to his brother for being such an immeasurable prick, then he struck.  _

 

_ And they fell. They’ve been sitting there for a month, and Dave’s tired of the sight of them. He’s standing a few metres back, watching the flags flap in the too-hot wind, and resisting the urge to tear them down. The sound of approaching footsteps tears his attention away, and he’s sure he’s hallucinating. He has to be. _

 

_ She’s older than he remembers. More weary. She looks like she’s been walking for months when she swims out of the shimmer of heat on the road and into his vision.  _

 

_ “Rose.” The name comes from him while he’s forgotten he can even speak at all, and then he’s running. _

 

 

Roxy’s laughter is fucking musical. It’s magical. A sound Dave didn’t know he was craving until it hits him. He hasn’t heard someone laugh like that in God knows how many years, and it almost throws him off his beat. A moment later, Roxy puts a hand out to stop him anyway. 

 

“No, no! So not happening right now, Strider.”

 

“Come on, it’s not even hard. You just say a bunch of words that rhyme, or whatever.”

“Dave. Where you not listenin’ when I told you I’m a hype man? I’m the backup, I don’t rap!”

 

“I bring you into my home, Roxy. I feed you-”

 

“Okay, hold up. Whatever this stuff is it does NOT count as food. I’m pretty sure this is paper mache. You’ve been eating paper mache for two years, Dave.”

 

“And you’ve been eating it for 2- 2.5 days. Your point?”

 

“My point is that you’re a total fool, DS. And I ain’t gonna rap.”

 

“Roxy. Come the fuck on, I did it for you-”

 

“Hey, not to interrupt this touching bonding moment, but it seems we’re approaching something.” Hal’s voice crackles over the PA in the galley, and Roxy’s on her feet in an instant. She hardly has time to beckon Dave to follow before she disappears into the bridge, and there’s a tense kind of urgency about her that drives him to obey, if a moment later.

 

It’s gone, by the time he makes it into the room after her. Roxy’s leaned over the controls again, but her attentions beyond the viewport. There’s a smile on her face when she looks back, but Dave hardly sees it. 

 

There’s life, out there. Meagre and humble, but it’s there, and it’s more than he’s seen in years. 

 

The space station looms in an otherwise dead area of space, a main spire surrounded by colonies of ships that pepper the sky like stars. 

 

“How many?” Dave doesn’t even realize how close he is to the glass until his breath fogs it, and Roxy’s laughing at him again. 

 

“A thousand. We got people from all over, rounded up every last human I think.” 

 

He manages naught more than a hum in response, and Roxy lets him stare a while longer. They’ve drifted much closer by the time she nudges him, her rifle strapped to her back where it wasn’t before. He hadn’t even noticed her move. 

 

“Ready to meet ‘em all?” 

 

He hesitates to answer, and then he doesn’t get the chance because she’s already heading out of the room. 

 

“What about Hal?”

 

“Yeah, I agree. What about Hal?” Comes his voice from the speaker. 

 

Roxy pauses by the door. “Oh, Dirk is so gonna want to see this. Let’s go get him, huh?”

 

Dave finds himself following when she inclines her head out of the room. There’s silence between them while they make their way down to the airlock, where Roxy’s ship is docked. She’s got the door open and she’s climbing through with nary a second thought, but Dave’s standing there, his hands shoved in his pockets. 

 

She only climbs down far enough so that she can fold her arms on the edge of the circular airlock and regard him. “It’s gonna be fine, you know.”

 

There’s that tone of voice she was using with Dirk a handful of days ago, and suddenly he understands it. “Just don’t wanna leave Hal alone.”

 

“Hal’s a big boy,” is her immediate response, and he hardly even has to look to know she’s rolling her eyes at him. He hates this. It’s been three days and she can already see through his bullshit. “Come on, dude. We’ll be back in no time, and I know some people who’re straight up pissin’ their pants to meet you.”

 

There’s the barest hint of a laugh from him, and he’s still hesitating but Roxy’s already disappeared down into her shuttle. He can hear it’s systems whirring into life along side the cargo ships, and it puts a sense of urgency in him but it’s still another moment before he moves. He spares a glance into the empty underbelly of the ship, and then disappears through the airlock.


End file.
